29 March 2013 ISSUE 346 Minority Ethnic Matters Overview MEMO is produced by the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities in partnership with BEMIS - empowering Scotland's ethnic and cultural Supported by minority communities. It provides an overview of information of interest to minority ethnic communities in Scotland, including parliamentary activity at Holyrood and Westminster, new publications, consultations, forthcoming conferences and news reports. Contents Immigration and Asylum Other News Race Relations Bills in Progress Racism and Religious Hatred Consultations Other Holyrood Job Opportunities Other Westminster Events/Conferences/Training New Publications Useful Links Note that some weblinks, particularly of newspaper articles, are only valid for a short period of time, usually around a month, and that the Scottish Parliament website has recently been redesigned, so that links published in previous issues of MEMO may no longer work. To find archive material on the Scottish Parliament website, copy the details from MEMO into the search facility at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/help/searchadvanced.aspx. Please send information for inclusion in MEMO to [email protected] and requests to be added to circulation to [email protected] The Scottish and UK Parliaments are in recess until 15 April 2013. The next issue of MEMO will be published on 15 April. Immigration and Asylum Holyrood Parliamentary Motion S4M-06101 Kevin Stewart: Abolition of UKBA—That the Parliament welcomes the announcement that the UK Border Agency is to be abolished; agrees with Theresa May’s assessment of the organisation as having a secretive culture and Keith Vaz’s assessment that it is not fit for purpose; believes that Home Office policies, which it considers are also unfit for purpose, have created this situation; calls for a more open structure to be set up, including allowing MSPs to represent their constituents, and hopes that this is followed by a progressive and forward-thinking immigration policy. http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx?SearchType=Adva nce&ReferenceNumbers=S4M-06101&ResultsPerPage=10 1 Immigration and Asylum (continued) Prime Minister David Cameron's immigration speech http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/david-camerons-immigration-speech/ Ministerial Statement UK Border Agency The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May): I would like to make a statement on the future of the UK Border Agency. Since 2010, the Government have been getting to grips with the chaotic immigration system we inherited. We have introduced a limit on economic migration from outside the EU, cut out abuse of student visas and reformed family visas—as a result, net migration is down by a third. We have also started to get to grips with the performance of the organisations that enforce our immigration laws: through the Crime and Courts Bill, we are setting up a National Crime Agency with a border policing command; the UK Passport Service continues to operate to a high standard; and since we split the Border Force from UKBA last year, 98% of passengers go through passport control within target times and Border Force meets all its passenger service targets. However, the performance of what remains of UKBA is still not good enough. The agency struggles with the volume of its casework, which has led to historical backlogs running into the hundreds of thousands; the number of illegal immigrants removed does not keep up with the number of people who are here illegally; and while the visa operation is internationally competitive, it could and should get better still. The Select Committee on Home Affairs has published many critical reports about UKBA’s performance. As I have said to the House before, the agency has been a troubled organisation since it was formed in 2008, and its performance is not good enough. In truth, the agency was not set up to absorb the level of mass immigration that we saw under the last Government. That meant that it has never had the space to modernise its structures and systems, and get on top of its work load. I believe that the agency’s problems boil down to four main issues: the first is the sheer size of the agency, which means that it has conflicting cultures and all too often focuses on the crisis in hand at the expense of other important work; the second is its lack of transparency and accountability; the third is its inadequate IT systems; and the fourth is the policy and legal framework within which it has to operate. I want to update the House on the ways in which I propose to address each of those difficulties. In keeping with the changes we made last year to the UK Border Force, the Government are splitting up the UK Border Agency. In its place will be an immigration and visa service, and an immigration law enforcement organisation. By creating two entities instead of one, we will be able to create distinct cultures. The first will be a high-volume service that makes high-quality decisions about who comes here, with a culture of customer satisfaction for business men and visitors who want to come here legally. The second will be an organisation that has law enforcement at its heart and gets tough on those who break our immigration laws. Two smaller entities will also mean greater transparency and accountability, and that brings me to the second change I intend to make. UKBA was given agency status in order to keep its work at an arm’s length from Ministers—that was wrong. It created a closed, secretive and defensive culture. So I can tell the House that the new entities will not have agency status and will sit in the Home Office, reporting to Ministers. In making these changes it is important that we do not create new silos. That is why we are creating a strategic oversight board for all the constituent parts of the immigration system— immigration policy, the UK Passport Service, the UK Border Force and the two new entities we are creating. That oversight board will be chaired by the Home Office permanent secretary. 2 Immigration and Asylum Ministerial Statement (continued) We will also work to make sure that each of the organisations in the immigration system shares services, including IT, because the third of the agency’s problems is its IT. UKBA’s IT systems are often incompatible and are not reliable enough. They require manual data entry instead of automated data collection, and they often involve paper files instead of modem electronic case management. So I have asked the permanent secretary and Home Office board to produce a new plan, building on the work done by Rob Whiteman, UKBA’s chief executive, to modernise IT across the whole immigration system. The final problem I raised is the policy and legal framework within which UKBA has operated. The agency is often caught up in a vicious cycle of complex law and poor enforcement of its own policies, which makes it harder to remove people who are here illegally. That is why I intend to bring forward an immigration Bill in the next Session of Parliament that will address some of these problems. The changes I have announced today are in keeping with the successes of this Government’s reforms so far. We are reducing net migration and we are improving the performance of the organisations that enforce our laws, but UKBA has been a troubled organisation for so many years. It has poor IT systems, and it operates within a complicated legal framework that often works against it. All those things mean that it will take many years to clear the backlogs and fix the system, but I believe the changes I have announced today will put us in a much stronger position to do so. I commend this statement to the House. To read the subsequent question and answer session see http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm130326/debtext/13032 6-0002.htm#13032655000006 Westminster Parliamentary Questions Immigration Philip Hollobone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment she has made of the potential inward migration to the UK of non-EU nationals who have obtained EU passports over the next five years. [149466] Reply from Mark Harper: The Home Office has not made such an assessment. UK population projections, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS): http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_235886.pdf assume net migration up to 2035. However, it is not possible to identify separately how much of the migration may be due to non-EU nationals who have acquired citizenship of an EU member state. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm130326/text/130326w0 001.htm#13032680000040 Immigrants (NHS Treatment) Frank Field: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what moves the Government intend to take to prevent the national health service becoming an international health service. Reply from the Secretary of State for Health (Jeremy Hunt): The current system of policing and enforcing the entitlement of foreign nationals to free NHS care is chaotic and often out of control. At a time when we are having to face the challenges of an ageing society, it places a significant and unjustified burden on our GP surgeries and hospitals and may well impact on the standard of care received by British citizens. As the Prime Minister said earlier today, the Government are determined to ensure that anyone not entitled to receive free NHS services should be properly identified and charged for the use of those services. Currently, we identify less 3 Immigration and Asylum Westminster Parliamentary Questions (continued) than half of those who should be paying and collect payment from less than half those we identify.